The Wine with No Name

I’ve dubbed this wine the Comeback Chardonnay because it stopped fermenting way back last September leaving the wine with residual sugar. But it’s been a game of patience which has finally paid off after it suddenly started fermenting 7 days ago with the arrival of the warm summer weather and is now bone dry!

This wine has been tormenting me for months and the aromas and flavours have been a rollercoaster affair by disappearing one day then back again the next; then good aromas and weird palate then vice versa which is all due to the sugar masking the true fruit. But now that it is stable and free of sugar the fruit is back and wow what a wine!

The flavours take me right back to the vineyard in Carcassonne last early September and the luscious ripe melon fruit of the grapes that I tasted. It’s taken a while but that’s winemaking - just got to think of a name now!

Cellar Master Petit Denis finally started full time for us at the Chai today and he was straight into the thick of it racking the Comeback Chardonnay out of barrel and off the sediment and blending into a stainless steel vat.

The IT guys Jack and Nick are in the Chai linking the very complicated network of all computers and phone lines to each other and the UK. The exciting thing is that they have also created the work stations up in the newly refurbished Chai office for our first team of Laithwaites wine merchants. They arrive tomorrow for a two week stint at the Chai to get a first hand look at what goes on so they will then be ready to get the word out!

Visit laithwaites.co.uk